Allen Parker Stults, 1913-2012

Longtime chairman of former American National Bank

January 24, 2013|By Bob Goldsborough, Special to the Tribune

Allen Stults (Chicago Tribune)

Allen Parker Stults started at Chicago's American National Bank as a page on the day the bank opened for business, launching a career that culminated some 45 years later with him as the bank's chairman and chief executive officer.

"He was very smart and quite inspirational," said Rex Sinquefield, a former American National executive vice president who went on to found Dimensional Fund Advisors. "He developed a culture of hiring very, very good people."

A former Wilmette resident, Mr. Stults, 99, died Saturday, Dec. 29, at his home in Tucson, Ariz., his son Jack said. He had been physically active until recently and had given up driving only this past summer, his son said.

In addition to his work at the bank, Mr. Stults sat on the McDonald's Corp. board of directors for 22 years.

Born in Chicago, Mr. Stults grew up in Winnetka and graduated from New Trier High School. He spent just a year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before the Depression wiped out his father, a real estate broker who specialized in selling farms.

After a three-month job search, he took a job as a clerk in the mailroom at Chicago's Federal Reserve Bank to deal with increased levels of correspondence from the 1933 bank holiday. Then at 20 he started with American National Bank as a page, making $58 a month.

Mr. Stults also headed to night school, earning a bachelor's degree from Northwestern University in 1938. At the bank he proved to be a quick study, eventually working in almost all of the bank's operating departments and holding positions at one time or another in 11 divisions.

In 1963 he was named the bank's president and five years later its chairman and CEO.

Colleagues recalled Mr. Stults' devotion to building relationships with the bank's customers, which in the 1960s and 1970s was hardly a common way of thinking.

"He was probably the best banker I ever met," said John Q. McKinnon, Wintrust Commercial Banking president and chief executive officer. McKinnon was an executive at American National under Mr. Stults. "He was one of the forerunners of developing a relationship mindset with his customers. I learned more from him than I've ever learned from anyone since."

At year-end news conferences, Mr. Stults would ruminate on a variety of issues of the day. For instance, in late 1973, he expressed doubts about President Richard Nixon's ability to lead the country, some nine months before Nixon resigned.

"I have been accused of an excess of candor on more than one occasion," he told the Tribune in 1978. "And I have put my foot in my mouth a few times. But I feel a lot better about me if I have a thought and express it rather than doing the political thing and keeping my mouth shut."

Mr. Stults retired from the bank in 1978. Six years later, American National was sold to First Chicago Corp.

Mr. Stults was a McDonald's director from the mid-1960s until 1988.

"He was an outstanding director," said Chicago lawyer and retired McDonald's director Donald Lubin. "McDonald's was at a stage when it was growing rapidly and had the need for capital, and he was the principal adviser on how best to raise it. He was really valuable at providing advice."

In 1973, Mr. Stults and his wife built an adobe-style house in Tucson, eventually moving there for good.

Mr. Stults' wife of 64 years, Betty, died in 2003. He is survived by two other sons, Larry and Van; a daughter, Shirley Stults Martin; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.